The following abbreviations are herewith defined, at least some of which are referred to within the following description.
3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project
ACK Positive-Acknowledgment
ANDSF Access Network Discovery and Selection Function
AP Access Point
APN Access Point Name
AS Access Stratum
BLER Block Error Ratio
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
CAZAC Constant Amplitude Zero Auto Correction
CCA Clear Channel Assessment
CCE Control Channel Element
CP Cyclic Prefix
CQI Channel Quality Information
CSI Channel State Information
CRS Cell-Specific Reference Signal
CSS Common Search Space
DCI Downlink Control Information
DL Downlink
DFT Discrete Fourier Transform
DMRS Demodulation Reference Signal
EDGE Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution
eNB Evolved Node B
EPDCCH Enhanced Physical Downlink Control Channel
E-RAB E-UTRAN Radio Access Bearer
ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute
E-UTRAN Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
FBE Frame Based Equipment
FDD Frequency Division Duplex
FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
FEC Forward Error Correction
GERAN GSM/EDGE Radio Access Network
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for Mobile Communication
GTP GPRS Tunneling Protocol
HARQ Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request
H-PLMN Home Public Land Mobile Network
IFDMA Interleaved Frequency Division Multiple Access
IoT Internet-of-Things
IP Internet Protocol
ISRP Inter-System Routing Policy
LAA Licensed Assisted Access
LBE Load Based Equipment
LBT Listen-Before-Talk
LTE Long Term Evolution
MCL Minimum Coupling Loss
MCS Modulation and Coding Scheme
MME Mobility Management Entity
MU-MIMO Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output
NACK or NAK Negative-Acknowledgment
NAS Non-Access Stratum
NBIFOM Network-Based IP Flow Mobility
NB-IoT NarrowBand Internet of Things
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
PCell Primary Cell
PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel
PCID Physical Cell Identification (“ID”)
PCO Protocol Configuration Options
PCRF Policy and Charging Rules Function
PDCCH Physical Downlink Control Channel
PDCP Packet Data Convergence Protocol
PDN Packet Data Network
PDSCH Physical Downlink Shared Channel
PDU Protocol Data Unit
PGW Packet Data Network Gateway
PHICH Physical Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel
PLMN Public Land Mobile Network
PRACH Physical Random Access Channel
PRB Physical Resource Block
PSD Power Spectrum Density
PSS Primary Synchronization Signal
PUCCH Physical Uplink Control Channel
PUSCH Physical Uplink Shared Channel
QoS Quality of Service
QPSK Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
RAB Radio Access Bearer
RAN Radio Access Network
RAR Random Access Response
RE Resource Element
RRC Radio Resource Control
RS Reference Signal
RX Receive
SC-FDMA Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access
SCell Secondary Cell
SCH Shared Channel
SGW Serving Gateway
SIB System Information Block
SINR Signal-to-Interference-Plus-Noise Ratio
SR Scheduling Request
SSS Secondary Synchronization Signal
TAU Tracking Area Update
TBS Transport Block Size
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
TDD Time-Division Duplex
TDM Time Division Multiplex
TED Tunnel Endpoint Identification (“ID”)
TTI Transmit Time Interval
TX Transmit
UCI Uplink Control Information
UE User Entity/Equipment (Mobile Terminal)
UL Uplink
UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
V-PLMN Visited Public Land Mobile Network
WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
WLAN Wireless Local Area Network
In wireless communications networks, a frame structure for LTE FDD may be used. A radio frame of 10 milliseconds (“ms”) may include 10 subframes, each of which is 1 ms. Each subframe further may include two slots, each of which is 0.5 ms. Within each slot, a number of OFDM symbols may be transmitted. The transmitted signal in each slot on an antenna port may be described by a resource grid comprising NRBULNscRB subcarriers and NsymbUL OFDM symbols, where NRBUL is a number of RBs in the UL (which is dependent on the transmission bandwidth of a cell); NscRB is the number of subcarriers in each RB; and each subcarrier occupies a certain frequency of size Δf. The values of NscRB, Δf, and NsymbUL may depend on a cyclic prefix as shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1ConfigurationNscRBNsymbULNormal Cyclic PrefixΔf = 15 kHz127Extended Cyclic PrefixΔf = 15 kHz6Δf = 7.5 kHz243
In certain configurations, an antenna port may refer to a logical antenna port (i.e., it may not necessarily refer to a physical antenna or antenna element). Mapping between an antenna port and physical antenna element(s) may be implementation specific. In other words, different devices may have a different mapping of physical antenna element(s) to the same antenna port. A receiving device may assume that the signals transmitted on the same antenna port go through the same channel. Moreover, a receiving device cannot assume signals transmitted on different antenna ports go through the same channel.
In certain wireless communication networks, an unlicensed spectrum may include operational requirements, such as an occupied bandwidth requirement, and a power spectrum density (“PSD”) requirement. In one wireless communication network, a nominal channel bandwidth is the widest band of frequencies (including guard bands) assigned to a single channel. In certain networks, the nominal channel bandwidth should be at least 5 MHz. In various networks, an occupied channel bandwidth (e.g., the bandwidth containing 99% of the power of the signal) should be between 80% and 100% of the nominal channel bandwidth. In some networks, a maximum PSD is 10 dBm/MHz in ETSI with a resolution bandwidth of 1 MHz. Such a maximum PSD implies that a signal which occupies a small portion of the bandwidth may not be transmitted at the maximum available power at a UE due to the PSD and occupied bandwidth constraints. Such operational requirements may be difficult to accommodate and/or may occupy excessive signaling overhead.